Let The Good Times Roll - Prologue

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),

Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!

First Impression: Well...this really has a lot of promise in being a truly intriguing piece but I feel like this prologue is in a bit of a tangle, and its a tangle that really needs sorting out before it can reach its full potential.

Anyway let's get right to it,

My English professor once told me why "Pygmalion" by George Bernard Shaw opens in the midst of a rainstorm. She explained that it's catastrophe which often welds humanity's comfort zone into nonexistence--or perhaps irrelevance, she supposed--until people are eventually forced to interact with one another. It's a ploy many writers use to spur a chance meeting between their characters. It was the rain which brought the flower girl and the note-taker together under the portico of St. Paul's Church.

My mother first met me when I emerged from the womb; there are no questions about those kinds of things. But I first met my mother at a later time; amongst an accumulation of moments that only graze the surface of my recollection. Her sitting on the edge of my bed with a bowl of chicken noodle soup; her with her reading glasses perched on the bridge of her nose as she read me The Berenstain Bears; her singing Norah Jones as she bustled around the kitchen. Mostly just her.

Much of what I remember of my mother is, despite various subtleties, all very much the same.

It was the mere science of reproduction that brought us together. Nothing as catastrophic as a rainstorm; I don't think it ever rained in Van Nuys. Yet I raged like into her life like a wildfire, and she accepted my presence. Nurtured it. She slowly drifted into the light of my life. Always there, but never less or more.

My mother and I weren't nothing; not quite. But it felt like the neighborhood had seen many other days exactly like the one I was born. Many other days without rainstorms and without the sky falling. It was her who decided we'd meet, and death which brought us apart, and I guess that's what my professor forgot to mention. That we're a part of an undocumented nonfiction, and that unlike characters, we have surreptitious minds of our own.

Hey Savv, what's happening? You may not be looking for reviews on this (seeing you've posted nothing further for months since chappy 1) but maybe it will work out well for future reference or something in your life.

So, this is written very very well, but I feel like it doesn't get the meaning across fluidly enough at points. After reading this, and then looking at the first handful of paragraphs in chapter one, I'm like, I have ZERO idea where this thing could be going--which nulls all or any of the suspense you would be trying to create. We need an indication, hints that are subtle but not to under-the-table and surreptitious that they are rendered invisible altogether. It's just going to be an immediate detachment for the reader's heart. A prologue is usually made up of some kind of longer action/eventful scene incorporating imagery and feeling: but what I'm receiving here is stone cold, something almost second-person in perspective. 1st person really falls on its face more often than not if it never transitions out from under the objectivity-like state of thoughts and observations: emotion is what it feeds on.

This prologue may well be important, but it does itself a disfavor when presented like this. I would recommend, if you ever plan on re-drafting this, or creating another prologue on down the road, you integrate more of the sensory (even if you still would have it remain all very vague reflection or something on the narrator's part, one could think more dramatic and fervid.

I did have to read this a couple of times through. I would like to offer a few suggestions to you to get rid of some of the difficulty which it gave me reading it at first. Using "weld" to describe the evaporation of humanity's comfort zone is, striking (and I applaud you there, i like stylistic appeal) but it goes over like anchovies in a PB&J, you feel me? in this case, I would respectfully say to replace it with something less... personified. I do enjoy what's in irrelevance there between the dashes, that makes it more English teacher-y, and adds character where there otherwise--or at least I'm not feeling--isn't much. Now the part about St. Paul's Church I was disappointed bc I wanted to know more, but it cut out abruptly and suddenly I'm fronted by the image of some stereotypical mom that I can only hope to be viewing anywhere close to her accurate portrayal; I'm not even given specific personality to infer from actions she carries out; (not to be harsh but) chicken soup is cliche, bedtime stories & occupying the kitchen are as well. Honestly I don't know if I care what she is singing, cuz that makes it no clearer who she is or what things she likes; if anything I find it far too distracting than it should be. The reading glasses is a good touch though I think.

I like the one-liner paragraph a-lot, because it's sort of oxymoronic. I am unable to process what "never less or more" means regarding being the light of the mc's life. That might be just an inability to process on my end, idk. Why do you want to give the mom's death away right here, 4th paragraph, this early!? there might actually be suspense if that's not flashing like silver on a sunny day into my iris. You might find a different way to introduct the "undocumented nonfiction" part: for while that sentence is well-placed, interesting, and everintriguing, bouncing it off the professor comes off like a distasteful joke kind of, really.

I don't think this is a bad prologue. I think it's around par. I very much like this idea of the rainstorm and the relationship between mother and child here, and how it all might tie in to this story. I just don't think it's very alive. It's like an old reptile trying to sun itself on a rock in the first week of spring: discolored and stiff. There is as many good things in this as there are bad, I merely pointed at most of the things that could use improvement so to be more helpful than sitting around to whisper sweet nothings in your ego. What you've done right here you probably already understand and can replicate.

(Double post please delete)

This is very nice prose, but I do not see what the Pygmalion thing has to do with it, or rainstorms. You need to tie those things in later to get away with using them here, but since you write such good prose, you probably will tie them in later. The character comes across as extremely intellectual and sort of pretentious and you did a very good job conveying that. I also got that underneath the intellectualism and pretense she really loves her mother. And the "my mother first met me when I was born, I first met her at a later time" but was pretty interesting. Now I'm off to read Chapter 1.

Ello there mon ami!

I'll just cut right to the cut, okay? I found this prologue to be a bit intriguing in a way that I wasn't expecting. First of all, based on how you wrote it, I want to point out that the main character is very well spoken and quite educated (which I guess isn't very shocking). The narrator has a way of presenting a person, place, or idea in a very intellectual way that caught my attention. Second, I'm not sure if this was intentional or not, but the character sounds very void of emotion in this prologue. Like, their feelings towards their mother doesn't transit into the writing and so I ended up reading this in a very flat, monotone type of voice in my mind. Still, I think this is a pretty good start and I'm curious to see how this story unfolds. Keep writing and good luck with this project!